Grading. I've gotten numerous emails recently as people are checking up on their grades, so I thought I should make a general announcement about that. Each week there are 30 points of required work, so to get an A in the class, you need to be getting around 27-30 points per week. There is extra credit every week, too - some people use extra credit to make up for missed work, but you can also use extra credit to get ahead in class, earning more than 30 points per week. For a chart that shows you week by week point totals and other information about the grading system, you might want to look again at this Grading Information page - you saw this page back in the first week of the semester, but now you will be able to make better sense of the information, watching your total points adding up week by week. Let me know if you have any questions that are not answered on that page.
Storybook stack. As always on Monday, I will have a huge bunch of assignments in the Storybook stack that were turned in over the weekend or on Monday morning. The first thing I will do on Monday morning when I get to work is to update the list of items in the Storybook stack. So, after 8 a.m. or so on Monday, you will be able to check the contents of the stack to make sure I received your assignment. I will be reading and reply to the assignments in the order they were turned in.
October 13: Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Monday, October 13, marks the birthday in 1948 of the great Pakistani qawwali singer, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Sadly, he died in 1997, but he left behind an amazing musical career with many beautiful recordings. You can read more about his musical career and legacy in this Wikipedia article. I was lucky enough to hear him perform in 1993, and it was one of the most marvelous concerts I have ever attended. Qawwali is a musical style traditionally associated with Sufism (that should mean something to those of you in World Literature, and also to those of you in Myth-Folklore who read about Rumi back in Week 6). There are some wonderful concert recordings at YouTube - and here is a picture that give you a sense of what his ecstatic concert performances looked like:
